The iPhone 5 Review

Has there ever been a device that's been more hyped, more leaked, and more anticipated? Unlikely.

This is Apple's biggest product we're talking about. This is post-Steve Jobs Apple we're talking about. This is the manifestation of Dieter Rams' ten principles of good design. And like the iPhone 4S, it's been met with a palpable mixture of wonder and disappointment.

But forget the expectations: put simply, the iPhone 5 is fantastic; it's the best iPhone by a long shot and a strong candidate for the mobile phone throne. But in a world filled with countless, diverse Android devices, and with a sleek batch of Windows Phone 8 phones on the horizon, is the iPhone 5 too safe? Is it too little too late?

The iPhone 5 can only seem like a "minor upgrade" until you hold it. It's not until the phone is in your hand that you realize just how much has really changed.

The iPhone 5 is astonishingly lightweight and thin. While Apple's claims that the iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone is questionable (The Droid Razr is .5mm thinner almost everywhere, except its 1.1mm camera bump), at only 7.6mm, it's still one of the thinnest smartphones out there.

The iPhone 5 features a beautiful diamond-cut chamfered edge.

While we liked the sturdy feel of the iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPhone 5 feels a bit better in the hand, and much better in your pocket. It's thinner and lighter, but it's also longer, and that might not please everyone.

The elongated display is the most immediately noticeable change. It's gained another half-inch (now 4-inches diagonal) while retaining its crystal clear, 326 pixels-per-inch Retina Display. This changes the iPhone's aspect ratio to 16:9, which makes it preferable for both games and movies, but it also means you'll have to do some thumb stretching and phone rejiggering to reach that top left corner.

And you'll be reaching for that corner a lot: on the iPhone, the Back button appears in the upper left corner, so that increased screen size screen might actually make navigating your phone more difficult. We don't see the same problem so much on big-screen Android devices, because software buttons in Android are on the bottom of the screen, well within reach.

And in some places, it seems Apple just didn't know what to do with the extra screen space - there are extra columns all over the music player, a huge gap in the alarm app, and a few spots of weirdness in other Apple apps.

To make the iPhone 5 this light and thin, Apple had to ditch its bulky, legacy 30-pin dock connector. The new Lightning cable is another proprietary Apple plug - but it's both more powerful and more capable than Micro USB. While we love that the Lightning cable is reversible, it doesn't perform any function the the old 30-pin couldn't, and it won't fit old iPhone accessories - unless you buy Apple's $30 dock adapter - which smacks of highway robbery.

Other design differences are less consequential. The headphone jack has moved to the bottom of the phone; the FaceTime camera is centered above the earpiece; the back of the phone is now two-tone, featuring scuff-able aluminum backing. That's bad news if you want to leave your phone case-less and keep it pristine, but we still prefer scuffed aluminum to scuffed plastic.

Internals

Apple has long contested that specs don't matter, and with the iPhone 5 they've proven their point.

It's got worse specs than the Galaxy S3 (1GB of RAM, dual-core CPU at 1.3GHz vs 2GBs of RAM and a dual-core processor at 1.51GHz), but the iPhone 5 consistently outperformed it, by considerable margins.

That means everything the iPhone 5 does is snappy and fast, from opening apps to graphically intensive animations. Even the notorious "Welcome back to Game Center" banner doesn't make games stutter or lag. Loading screens disappear only moments after appearing. Detailed tests and reports have found the iPhone 5 to be the fastest smartphone there is.

With an App Store overflowing with quality games for both hardcore and casual gamers, the iPhone 5 is truly the best gaming phone on the market.

The iPhone 5's spec-defying holds true with its 1440mAh lithium-ion battery as well, which survives for 8 hours of LTE, 3G, voice calls, and around 10 hours of video playback. In testing, we found it was better all-around than the iPhone 4S.

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The iPhone 5 is truly the best gaming phone on the market.

After gaming, browsing, watching videos, and listening to music, we still had around 25% battery left at the end of an average day. Heavier use (especially gaming) can still kill your battery in less than a day - but if we had to choose between a thicker phone with a bigger battery and the iPhone 5, we'd still take the iPhone 5.

The increased power of the phone also has big implications for the camera app. It's fast. For the first time ever, you can take photos just about as fast as you can hit the button. This is a welcome improvement over the 4S, which was speedy but nowhere close to this fast.

Otherwise, the camera is about the same. It now utilizes a Sapphire lens, which allows for much better low-light photography but causes purple splotches if the light source catches the lens wrong, which it often does.

The iPhone 5's front-facing camera has been upgraded from a VGA camera to a 1.3 megapixel camera that should make FaceTime calls and glamour shots much nicer.

The Verdict

If you're an iPhone user looking for your next iPhone, the 5 offers more than enough incentive to upgrade. More than anything, the blinding speed of this phone should impress even the most callous Apple cynics. LTE is a game changer if you've never had it before. The phone consistently mops the floor with better spec'ed phones. It has the best games, the largest breadth of quality apps, one of the best cameras, a clean and easy operating system and - unless you buy off-contract - it starts at $200. The iPhone 5 is the whole deal.

But still - it might not be the right deal for everyone. Longtime users may feel burned by the new Lightning cable obsoleting their accessories unless they buy those ludicrously expensive $30 adapters. The iPhone scuffs very easily. There's no NFC onboard and Passbook is currently almost worthless. The Maps app is a mess, and many apps won't be optimized for the 4-inch screen for some time.

Apple has made enormous strides by making safe and smart upgrades to a consistently stellar phone. It's no surprise the iPhone 5 is just that: safe and stellar.

Amazing

The iPhone 5 is the best iPhone by a long shot and a strong candidate for the mobile phone throne.